Wiggle the Wires

[Toby Chastain]

Toby grunted as he continued contorting his body behind the television and hefty display in the student lounge. There were technically a few in the lounge proper, but this one had been decreed "the gaming area" for as long as Toby had known, and most likely longer. There were beat up board game boxes lining a low shelf off to one wall, after all. Not that Toby was working on those, oh no. His expertise lay elsewhere.

"Hey look, these long, gangly limbs come in handy," he quipped to what was mostly himself as he stretched his arm back, fingers flailing and trying to grab something. Really, he should have asked around to see if there was someone with super strength or size manipulation or even phasing. But Toby might not have been thinking too clearly and, well, sometimes you don't think of the easy solution until your fingers are just touching wires.

"Got 'em," he grunted, before wiggling. As he did, he realized something: he couldn't see the screen. So he had no idea if what he was doing was actually helping the display at all. Heck, he could even be wiggling the wrong wires. "Hey!" Toby cried, using his free hand to wave and try to get attention. "Hey, can someone tell me if this is doing something?" He grunted and wiggled the wires, resisting the urge to cross his fingers as he did.

[Myrtle Giberti]

Gibs was still just starting to get her bearings around Bellefonte. She always had trouble with directions and maps and learning all the ins and outs of a big school like this just didn’t come naturally to her. Even the dorm building was a bit of a maze. She walked back inside after a pleasant afternoon in the beautiful outdoors (as draining as her new power could be, she was irresistibly drawn to the grass and the trees waiting for her outside), stomping to get the mud off of her boots. She was just wondering how long it would take her of aimless wandering to find her room again when she heard someone call out.

Gibs thought about just heading up the stairs towards where she hoped her dorm room was, but she knew that if she was in such a situation, she would want someone to come and help her. “Treat others the way you want to be treated” and all that. Plus, it was impossible to make friends if she just sat in her room watching The Office. At least, that was what her mom always said. A little nervously, she headed towards the sound and found a boy crouched in front of a television screen.

“Um, if what is doing something?” she asked, but it took her a few more seconds of staring to realize the “this” he was talking about was the television. Gibs hated to be the barer of bad news, but the monitor didn’t seem to be showing much of anything at all. “Oh, the TV. It’s black.”

She stepped a little closer to him, trying to look behind the television to see what he was doing. “What’s wrong with it?”

[Toby Chastain]

"Oh, hey, girl voice," Toby said, only half realizing it was aloud before he added something stupid, like, say something about how she sounded cute or something (she sort of did, but this was beside the point and technically outside his current mission parameters. Maybe when his head wasn't stuck behind an entertainment center). "Still black? Dang."

Toby twisted, wiggling a few more wires and considering. That should have done something, right? Unless he had the wrong ones? Toby grabbed the wire and started working it down, trying to figure out where they connected and where this all led. He could hear her talking to him as well, which proved a delightful distraction from this puzzle:

"Not working," he said. "Technically it's not showing the picture for this gaming system," he pointed in the general direction of the one he was working on. "So I think there's some wiring issues or something. Not sure, hence," he wiggled the wires more vigorously. "Still nothing?"

[Myrtle Giberti]

Gibs frowned at the black screen in front of her. The guy was definitely right. There was no way anyone could play a game on this black, dark screen. She peeked over his shoulder to get a somewhat decent look at the wires he was fiddling with. She was sure that she knew even less about this whole wiring-TV-game console thing than he did, but she felt like she should at least try.



As she was watching his fiddling, she thought there may have been a flash of light from the screen out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, I think some part of it might have turned on?” she offered hopefully, leaning back a little to get a better look at the screen. However, the more she looked at the screen, the more if became apparent that nothing was happening.



“Oh, darn. Nevermind. Must have been a ghost or something.” She gently tapped the TV screen, wondering if it would somehow just pop up with some jiggling, like how people always banged electronics on tables to try to make them work. “What game are you trying to play?”

[Toby Chastain]

Toby grunted as the girl confirmed that, yet again, his efforts were for naught. Or maybe he'd been close there? he paused, looking over at her, barely seeing her over his twisted and contorted body. "I'm going to take that as progress," he mumbled, before wiggling some wires again. He wasn't going to try this much longer before moving on to slightly more desperate measures.

"Seriously, where are the technopaths when you need them?" he mumbled before giving the wires another hearty wiggle, this time all but shaking the television. According to his helper, nothing was happening yet. The second question actually had Toby snaking himself back out from his position.

"I really hadn't gotten that far," he admitted, before stretching, feeling some bones creak and crack. "Tell you what: help me figure this out, and we can totally pick a game out to play. Assuming that's your thing," Toby gave her a little salute. "Name's Toby, by the way."